by Jory Strong
Was she suspicious of him now? Afraid of him?
Pride at her intelligence and cunning, her abilities, warred with a desperate fear inside him—that the note was a tactic meant to delay him.
They had talked…some. But he had no real knowledge of her beliefs. Whether she though it possible life existed on other planets. Whether or not she had ever wondered if human myth and legend might have sprung from contact with races more advanced than her own.
Kye rubbed his chest in an effort to reduce the crushing agony. The news Jeqon had presented him with had been nearly unbearable—and now this—she was gone. If he lost her…
* * * * *
Cop! The word screamed through Savannah as her gaze locked onto the man casually leaning against a bus stop a block away from the residential hotel where the two underage prostitutes had taken the pervert back to their room.
Savannah drove by, moving past where he stood and keeping her face in profile, stiffening when she looked in the side-view mirror and saw him pull a cell phone from his pocket.
It took her a block to calm down, to realize she’d never seen him before. To question her instincts, though her sour stomach told her he probably had something to do with the escort service investigation.
She was screwed. Big time. So there wasn’t anything to lose by stopping in at the Easy Times Casino. Only as soon as she got there she realized that if The Ferret had sent the chips so she’d show up, then she needed to do it in something other than her truck. She needed to get another vehicle. One that couldn’t be easily traced to her. She wasn’t going to leave her truck unattended in a place someone might sabotage it. She wasn’t that confident in her ability to spot a bomb, especially if it was a sophisticated device.
With a sigh of frustration Savannah decided to do a drive-by of her apartment building. She didn’t really expect to see either The Ferret or Holland waiting on the street in front of it, but what she did see nearly made her slam on her brakes.
Another cop. This one dark-haired and leaning against a Town Car.
He straightened in surprised recognition when she rounded the corner. His body language giving him away though the dark glasses hid his expression.
Savannah hit the gas and shot past him, watching as he whipped his cell phone out of his pocket. Fuck, what was going on?
She almost raced back to the cabin…almost. But then she remembered her intention to buy some clothes for Kye. That slowed her down long enough to get her thinking. If she was going to obey the captain’s orders and remain “on ice” until she had to call him again, then she sure as hell was going to take some time and do some research on the Easy Times Casino.
Savannah borrowed a phone book from the clerk at a clothing store on the edge of town. Located the nearest library with Internet access and a short time later took a seat in front of a computer.
Her thoughts flashed back to the two men she’d seen and she wondered if she should make a preemptive strike and call the captain before he heard about her drive-by activities. Instinct told her they were cops, but they could be private investigators and she wasn’t in a hurry to get in trouble.
Savannah grimaced. She was good with faces but miserable with names. She knew she hadn’t seen either man before. But that didn’t mean anything. There were plenty of cops in Reno and surrounding areas she wouldn’t know by sight. Plenty more in Nevada and the rest of the country, plus the Feds.
A sick feeling formed in the pit of her stomach with the image of the dark-haired man. He had the look of a Fed.
She tried to chase the queasiness away with hormones. Picturing the two men again, only this time seeing hard bodies that shouted prime male specimen—even with the short hair. Too bad about that. Kye had ruined her when it came to hair.
She frowned at the thought of Kye and his disappearance. A small worry settled in the pit of her stomach. If he wasn’t at the cabin when she got back, she was going to have to decide whether or not to go to the Bar None for a horse or an ATV.
Or call her brothers and ask them to come over and help her look for him.
Or decide Kye had rolled out of bed and hit the road. Maybe walked back to the highway and thumbed a ride despite the way he’d demanded that she admit she belonged to him before he’d fucked her this morning.
Even the thought of him taking off like that made Savannah’s chest go tight with threatened pain. Damn, no wonder she went for long stretches without a man in her life.
She forced her mind away from the cops and Kye, focusing instead on her search of the Internet for information regarding the Easy Times Casino.
It was a small casino—relatively speaking. She’d seen that for herself. And it was new. Opened by a dot-com millionaire named Steven Traynor.
There were pictures of him. A sixty-year-old man, a gorgeous thirty-year-old wife at his side. Him shaking hands with movers-and-shakers, politicians and businessmen, some local, some not. There were sports stars, actors and actresses, but no way of knowing who’d been hired to put in an appearance and who’d come on their own for their own reasons.
She expanded the search. But as far as she could see, there was nothing special about Traynor, nothing that rang any bells except for a tiny, one-liner about the wife—a former lingerie model from New Jersey who’d been a Las Vegas showgirl before she married Steven Traynor.
Savannah frowned. Didn’t The Ferret come from Jersey? Didn’t his rap sheet start there? If she could just swing by the station…
She left the computer and went to the periodicals section. It was a long shot but she scanned a week’s worth of newspapers.
Nothing. Same old, same old. At least locally. And then a small, three-inch blurb in the international news caught her attention. Prosecutor in Columbian drug lord trial killed when his car exploded.
Her stomach dropped and her pulse jerked as realization spread through her. Nickels and dimes. Not just a way to describe casino chips or something small-time, but a way to describe quantities of drugs. A nickel bag. A dime.
Car bombs used to be a popular way to eliminate anyone trying to shut down the flow of drugs—not so much in the United States, but elsewhere, and borders didn’t stop crime and terror from being imported.
If drugs were involved it would explain why Creech and Mastrin from Vice had shown up at The Ferret’s apartment. It would explain the captain’s hurried hang-up when she’d pointed out what the slang names for the chips were.
Savannah put the newspaper away, wondering how the guys she’d seen near the residence hotel and her apartment fit into it.
Then it clicked.
Casinos and prostitutes and money laundering. They went hand-in-hand despite all the rules in place.
Which meant she was right. Cops. Probably Feds.
Savannah grinned despite the nervousness curling in her stomach. She just might get a detective’s shield after all—if she didn’t get fired or killed.
She left the library. But not before she’d paused and scoped out the parking lot. Not before she’d checked the truck, though she was guessing the bomb might be a one-time deal now that she was on the run.
Well, not literally on the run. But in hiding.
Damn! This was too hot to sit on for two days.
She found a phone booth and placed another call to the captain, bracing herself to get chewed out. Only this time she got voice mail.
Savannah went for broke and came clean about everything she’d done since talking to him. She even threw in the information about her apartment being searched before she hung up. Then she headed for the cabin, her gut churning. Frustration and worry replacing the adrenaline she’d been riding on.
How was she going to help bring in the bad guys if she was holed up in the cabin? Sure, there were compensations—her agitation increased—if Kye was there. But if she’d wanted to play the part of the little woman who stayed at home while the men handled the dangerous stuff, then she would have married a cop instead of becoming one!
&
nbsp; With a sigh of frustration she got off the highway, slowing to a respectable speed until she got on the private ranch lands, then she put the truck into four-wheel drive and let loose, leaving a trail of dust in her wake and regaining her sense of humor in the process. No, it didn’t look like she was anxious to get back to a certain long-haired guy who sent her libido into overdrive.
And yet her blood thundered through her heart and head and cunt when she fishtailed to a stop in front of the cabin and Kye emerged. Tight expression. Tight jeans. A man in the grip of serious testosterone overload.
He was on her the second she slid out of the driver’s seat. Pushing her against the side of the truck, one hand in her hair, the other on her breast in an unmistakable gesture of ownership. His lips and tongue taking hers in a storm of furious passion and domination.
Savannah didn’t resist him, had no thought to fight him. It was a reaction to seeing the cop watching her apartment. To making the connection between drugs and the car bomb. To danger.
That’s what she told herself. A fleeting thought that didn’t matter anyway. Kye was a walking, talking, sexual fantasy and she wanted him like she’d never wanted another man.
The kiss was a plundering, savage show of strength ending only when he pulled his mouth from hers, both of them panting, struggling for breath. His eyes flashing green fire. “Where have you been?”
“To town. To call the captain. I left you a note.”
He stripped her shirt and bra off without saying anything else, tossed them to the ground before once again pinning her to the truck. His mouth ravishing hers, his tongue thrusting aggressively.
She struggled to get her hands between them. Ripped his shirt open when she succeeded, sent buttons scattering to the dirt as heat coursed through her with the feel of his chest pressing against her own bare flesh, flattening her breasts under the weight of his body.
Savannah moaned and closed her eyes. Burning up from the inside out. Sure that if he didn’t put his cock inside her soon she was going to implode.
She was so hot. So hungry. As though a single look from Kye, a single touch had set her breasts and pussy on fire.
“Please, Kye,” she said when he let her breathe again.
“Take your pants off.”
Her cunt clenched in reaction to his hard command. Liquid arousal rushed to her inner thighs, soaked her thong, making her glad to strip it away from swollen flesh and let the air strike her body.
Feminine satisfaction filled her at the feral expression on Kye’s face. Lust and need. Harsh desire. His chest rising and falling in short pants. His hands at the front of his pants, jerking the zipper down and freeing a swollen, leaking cock.
Savannah licked her lips. Her knees weakened with the sudden desire to go to them, to take him into her mouth. But before she could do it he took her arm, forced her a few steps away from the truck and then along the side to where the cab ended and the bed began.
He turned her, bent her over so her hands rested on the edge of the truck bed, her legs spread, a carnal version of cops and robbers. She couldn’t resist. Savannah looked back over her shoulder at him. “Are you going to frisk me now?”
Kye answered with his body, closing the distance between them so his cock slid through the juncture of her thighs and over plump wet cunt lips, glided against her abdomen. “I’m going to do more than frisk you.”
“Good,” she said, and her response was a match to gasoline, the end of anything other than burning, feeling, screaming as Kye took her hard and fast, took her over and over again, biting her each time she climaxed until finally they were both leaning against the truck, its smooth, sun-warmed metal the only thing keeping them upright.
They remained against the truck, panting, momentarily sated, in harmony until Kye said, “You will not go anywhere without me again. You will not disappear as you did today. I won’t tolerate it. I won’t allow it.”
Savannah’s first impulse was to laugh. To tease him about being a caveman. Her second impulse was to get pissed. To put the hurt on him the same way she’d done numerous times when her older brothers tried the word allow on for size.
She wriggled out from between Kye and the truck. Her emotions ping-ponging between the two extremes until finally tilting toward anger as she remembered how worried she’d been about his disappearance.
“You better cool it with the allow, Batman,” she said, scooping up her clothes. “And here’s a little bulletin for you. You disappeared before I did. Without even bothering to leave me a note. At least I had the decency to tell you what I was up to and that I was coming back. For all I knew, you’d hit the highway and thumbed your way to parts unknown after getting—” She broke off and strode toward the cabin door, knowing she’d better stop before she said something she’d regret.
Shock ripped through Kye. Outrage. Did she truly think he would leave after mating with her? Would leave without a word? Disappearing as though she was a conquest who meant nothing to him? Hadn’t he repeatedly told her she belonged to him?
Only she didn’t. She belonged to another by Council law.
Pain joined the outrage. Spiking into him, opening a gaping wound in his heart so that desperation poured in. He chased after Savannah. Raw emotion coalescing—focused on her insult to his honor—demanding he punish her for it.
“My absence this morning was necessary,” Kye growled as soon as he stepped into the cabin. “I would never disappear from your life without knowing you were safe and cared for by others.”
Savannah stopped in the bathroom doorway. Taking in his aggressive stance. The harsh lines of a face. The pain etched there.
She’d hurt him. And just like that her own anger faded, replaced by a shimmer of guilt. “I’m sorry for implying you’re the kind of man who would hit the road after getting laid. But I was worried when there was no note, no way to find you, no way to know if you were hurt or in trouble and needing help.”
Her concern poleaxed Kye. Cut right through the wild emotion and re-centered him. “I offer my apology as well. I thought you would sleep most of the day and I would be back before you woke up.”
Savannah rolled her shoulders, her body relaxing as she offered him a smile. “Okay then, we’re good. I’m going to take a quick shower.” Her smile turned teasing and love surged into him. He was already moving toward her when she said, “For the record, Batman, the sex was fantastic, mind-blowing in fact, but it wasn’t so overwhelming that I needed to spend most of the day in bed recovering.”
Kye laughed. Humor, anticipation, lust mingling together, his earlier resolve to punish her returning, re-formed by her playfulness, her challenge.
Impulse guided Savannah’s actions. Relief that they were back on solid ground. She dropped the clothing and bolted, getting only a short distance before Kye captured her and wrestled her to the bed, managed to get her face down and draped over his thighs.
She jerked, shouted in surprise when he delivered the first stinging slap to her buttocks. Arousal coated her inner thighs with the next one, her body turned on while her mind still struggled, processed.
Savannah moaned when Kye smoothed his hand over his ass cheeks, forged between her legs and dipped into her slit before spanking her again. Each strike driving thought and self-consciousness further away until she was lifting to meet his hand, hyper-aware of the firmness of his thighs, the hardness of his erection, the full, flushed cunt lips between her legs.
“Please,” she whispered, arching upward, his hand delivering its blow before sliding between her legs. His fingers going once again to her channel. Pushing in, making her cunt clench as it tried to grip and pull them deeper.
“Please what?”
“Fuck me.”
He fucked into her with his fingers. Then retreated. Teased over her swollen labia before pushing in again. “This way? Or with my cock?”
“Either. Whatever you want.”
And with a roar the earlier desperation returned. What he wanted was her.
Now. Forever.
Kye moved, putting her on her back and reaching to the nightstand for the bouren strip he’d worn earlier to keep his hair out of the way, using it to secure her wrists to the headboard.
He’d thought the wildness inside him had eased by sinking his mating fangs into her as she’d writhed underneath him in pleasure as he took her against the truck. But each coupling only increased the need he had for her. A primitive desire fueled by both the Vesti mating fever and the uncertainty of their future together.
He couldn’t lose her. Not to death. Not to another male.
A scream of denial built inside him. Swelling in his chest so he covered Savannah’s lips with his in order to prevent it from escaping. Kissed her until the taste of her, the feel of her underneath him became his only reality. Her mouth and tongue, her soft curves what he needed to gentle the emotion raging inside him, to slow the heart pounding erratically, to calm his thoughts so they became centered on pleasing her, on savoring her.
With a groan he slid down her body and latched on to her nipple, licking, biting, drawing comfort from her breasts even as his cock throbbed against his belly.
He suckled until she was arching beneath him, begging for him to free her hands so she could touch him. Until she was whimpering, tilting her pelvis, her arousal dampening his flesh as her clit stabbed him in a tiny, hard demand for attention.
Only then did he leave the succor of her breasts, kissing downward until he claimed the engorged knob, sucked it into his mouth, struck it, rubbed his tongue over the naked head until Savannah came in a violent, thrashing orgasm, his name on her lips, her scream freeing the one lodged in his chest.
Kye removed the bouren tie and returned to his earlier position, reveled in the feel of her arms around him as he slid his penis home. His lips soft on hers. His thrusting echoing the gentleness of his mouth. Slow now. Deep. Lasting. A rhythm meant to endure for a lifetime. His release a long surge of liquid heat that consumed them both and brought a temporary peace.
